Day 6: Arco - Carey

We start the day at 7am. making breakfast and doing laundry. It is cloudy, but not chilly. By 10am. we hit the road again. At noon, after 14km of riding, we stop to make chicken salad for lunch (see the picture below)
This is our "bad head wind" day and we start uphill, too. At 2pm. we are at The Craters of the Moon National Monument visitor center (elev. 5900'). We have ridden 31.6km in 2:20. We meet the couple from Philadelphia and chat for a while. They have been on the road for 9 weeks. They plan to ride to Boise and then spend some time in Bend, Oregon with friends before heading up to Portland. This is some adventurous and brave young couple, I have to say, they have never done any bike touring before and their gear is not even close to our top-notch stuff.
We keep going uphill in the strong head-wind. Finally, the road sign promises us a 6% grade downhill FOR A PATHETIC 1 MILE! Because of the wind we have to pedal it. When the grade levels a bit we see a truck turned upside down. Its load is all over the road, so we have to take detour through the shrubs. This truck passed us few miles earlier.
I think aloud that we are lucky not being around at the time of the accident; the thought echoed by the Philadelphia couple when we meet them again in Carey (elev. 4783'). We enter the town around 5:30pm. and decide to overnight there. At the time we do not have any idea if there is a place to stay. The other couple decides to continue to Ketchum, even if it is going to be another 46-mile ride and a thunderstorm is approaching. I wonder if they ever made it. Today we rode 72.6km in 5:05. The average speed was 14.3km/h.
There is one motel in town, Carey Sport Shop: RV Park, Bait & Tackle and Bar. We have a true retro room for $45 in this place, previously called Paris Motel (see the pictures at right and below). TV is there for decoration only (no antenna) and light bulbs are dead. Other than that, we Finns are warmly welcome being from the only country that paid back war debts to the United States.

We have dinner at Loading Chute Bar n' Grill. Tei has chili and a Garden salad, Tomi Fish n' Chips. The salad is pretty good. We down the meals with a couple of Coronas and have one more round in the bar; one of those bars no one pays attention to us aliens.

We continue our night in the Carey Sport Shop. We have one round of Amberbocks (Anheuser Busch stuff) and when ordering the next round someone asks, if we've ever tasted Bitch Creek ESB (by Grand Teton Brewing Co., Victor ID). We have not, but we will; for the next round and the next, and then they run out of it. Time to go to bed.

Day 7: Carey - Ketchum

After a long night socializing with locals and teaching them how to say "How are you?" in Finnish, we sleep well and crawl out of the bed at 8:20am. We have breakfast at Adamson Shell. Despite its name, it is not a seafood place but a gas station across the street.

Rain starts as soon as we start pedalling. Light sprinkle accompanies us uphill, but as soon as we reach the summit it stops. We continue to Bellevue. This whole area, vicinity of Sun Valley, is pretty touristy and famous for ski resorts and summer houses of Hollywood stars ("Don't go there, too many cars", the Carey people inform us). There is a bike path north from Bellevue to Haley.

. We reach Hailey at lunch time. We visit the Sun Valley Brewing Company, and have half orders of salads and a sampler of their beers: wheat, blonde, gold, lager, white cloud ale, IPA and porter. It looks sunnier outside, already.
The bike path continues all the way to Ketchum (elev. 5845'), where we arrive at 4:30pm. We use Tourist Info's courtesy phone to book a room at Lift Tower Lodge for $77; in this town that is considered cheap. Today we rode 66.8km in 4:15.

For the dinner venue we choose the most interesting sounding place, restaurant Baci (engl. kisses). We have olives and mozzarella for the appetizer; for entree Tomi has lamb sausage pizza and Tei ravioli. Not inexpensive but delicious. And the service is kind and attentive.

From Baci we continue to Sun Valley Wine Co. for a glass of wine. Our bar hopping asks for shorter distances since it starts raining. Next we find ourselves in the Cellar Pub for a Bitch Creek ESB and Mirror Pale Ale. We pay a visit top Whiskey Charley, but leave when the band starts playing. It is already late and we are tired, but we briefly drop by at Saw Tooth Club; interesting and popular bar. We order a couple of beers, which we don't even finish. The only recollection of the final round is that the beers were good.

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